Self-inflicted wounds. Indistinguishable from a cyberwar attack?
Zimbabwe
Government Shuts Down Internet, Backfires Spectacularly Affecting
Economy - Toshi Times
Zimbabwe has been ravaged by widespread local
unrest the past week. The catalyst? A controversial decision to
increase the prices of petrol and diesel by a massive 150 percent.
Citizens of Zimbabwe have since this voiced their
dissatisfaction with this decision through a series of protests and
demonstrations. Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook,
YouTube and WhatsApp have been integral in organizing these events.
… As such, it would appear that the
governmental-led shutdown of the internet has led to immensely worse
consequences. The national economy has effectively been disabled –
however, this was not caused by the protestors, rather, it was the
work of the government’s actions.
… a preexisting liquidity crisis in the
country has already led citizens towards alternative means of
exchange, such as cryptocurrencies or other cashless alternatives
such as bank cards.
All of these payment systems have now been
rendered moot, due to the government’s actions. It remains to be
seen how all of this will ultimately play out – but it already
seems plain that the government’s fear of economic turmoil has
caused exactly that.
Further defining the response…
Massachusetts
Amends Data Breach Notification Law to Require Free Credit Monitoring
The Governor of Massachusetts recently signed
House Bill No.
4806 into law, which will amend certain provisions of the state’s
data breach notification law. In addition to changing the
information that must be included in notifications to regulators and
individuals, the amendments will also require entities to provide
eighteen months of free credit monitoring services following breaches
involving Social Security numbers. The amendments, which will enter
into force on April 11, 2019, are discussed in greater detail below.
An interesting reaction.
NYPD Spy
Drones Fly into Privacy Headwinds
A squad of 14 New York Police Department drones
will
soon be soaring over the city’s skyline, with the ability to
record people’s lives, even if that’s not their stated use. Some
will be equipped with infrared cameras that have the ability to see
through walls and record the privacy of bedrooms, although, again,
NYPD says this isn’t the intent. Still, the technology isn’t
just creepy (though it is creepy); if not monitored carefully, its
deployment raises the specter of uses beyond those currently planned
by the NYPD that could be illegal.
… New Yorkers are being asked to take the NYPD
at its word, but many New Yorkers want a stronger guarantee. This is
part of why advocates and activists are pushing for the
Public Oversight of Technology Act (“POST Act”), a New York
City Council bill that would require the NYPD to develop and
publicize an “impact and use policy” for each piece of
surveillance technology it purchases.
Is this machine as accurate as the lab? How good
is “good enough?”
Coming Soon
to a Police Station Near You: The DNA ‘Magic Box’
… in early 2017, the police booking station in
Bensalem became the first in the country to install a Rapid DNA
machine, which provides results in 90 minutes, and which police can
operate themselves. Since then, a growing number of law enforcement
agencies across the country — in Houston, Utah, Delaware — have
begun operating similar machines and analyzing DNA on their own.
… In 2017, President Trump signed into law the
Rapid DNA Act, which, starting this year, will enable approved
police booking stations in several states to connect their Rapid DNA
machines to Codis, the national DNA database. Genetic
fingerprinting is set to become as routine as the old-fashioned kind.
… But already many legal experts and
scientists are troubled by the way the technology is being used. As
police agencies build out their local DNA databases, they are
collecting DNA not only from people who have been charged with major
crimes but also, increasingly, from people who are merely deemed
suspicious, permanently linking their genetic identities to criminal
databases.
A mere nibble. Wait for GDPR to bite!
Google has been fined $56.8 million by privacy
regulators in France, marking the country’s first use of the tough
new privacy rules enacted in Europe last year. Specifically, the
company is accused of violating provisions of the General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR) by using, without proper consent, the
private data of users to craft personalized ads; and by burying key
privacy disclosures pages deep, amid oceans of text.
In a statement Monday, France’s privacy
watchdog, CNIL, said that Google had been fined for needlessly
obscuring information concerning the processing of its users’ data,
which Europe’s privacy rules demand be made more easily accessible.
Essential information about how user data is processed, stored, and
used, it said, was “excessively disseminated across several
documents.” It required,
in some cases, up to five or six steps to unearth key disclosures,
including details of how Google amasses personal information to help
it pinpoint a user’s location.
… the French commission found Google’s
process for informing users about what precisely they’re consenting
to to be wholly inadequate.
… “We have found that large corporations
such as Google simply ‘interpret the law differently’ and have
often only superficially adapted their products,” Schrems
reportedly told the station. “It is important that the authorities
make it clear that simply
claiming to be compliant is not enough.”
Yeah, it’s complicated.
Dutch
surgeon wins landmark 'right to be forgotten' case
… The doctor’s registration on the register
of healthcare professionals was initially suspended by a disciplinary
panel because of her postoperative care of a patient. After an
appeal, this was changed to a conditional suspension under which she
was allowed to continue to practise.
But the first results after entering the doctor’s
name in Google continued to be links to a website containing an
unofficial blacklist, which it was claimed amounted to “digital
pillory”.
… The judge said that while the information on
the website with reference to the failings of the doctor in 2014 was
correct, the pejorative name of the blacklist site suggested she was
unfit to treat people, and that was not supported by the disciplinary
panel’s findings.
The court further rejected Google’s claim that
most people would have difficulty in finding the relevant information
on the medical board’s Big-register,
where the records are publicly held.
The surgeon’s lawyer, Willem van Lynden, from
the Amsterdam firm MediaMaze, said the ruling was groundbreaking in
ensuring doctors would no longer be judged by Google on their fitness
to practise.
Don’t they store US user data in the US?
Russian
Watchdog Launches 'Administrative Proceedings' Against Facebook,
Twitter
… The
state regulator has repeatedly warned the companies they could be
banned if they do not comply with a 2014 law requiring social
networking sites to store the personal data of Russian users inside
the country.
Zharov
said Facebook and Twitter provided "no concrete information on
localising the data of Russian users on the territory of the Russian
Federation."
He
added that the companies also did not provide a "timeframe"
for when they plan to store the data of Russian users in Russia.
The
2014 law has caused widespread concern as it is seen as putting the
information of Russian users at risk of being accessed by the
country's intelligence services.
Would automating justice eliminate bias?
Machine
Learning and the Rule of Law
Chen, Daniel L., Machine Learning and the Rule of
Law (January 6, 2019). Computational Analysis of Law, Santa Fe
Institute Press, ed. M. Livermore and D. Rockmore, Forthcoming.
Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3302507
“Predictive judicial
analytics holds the promise of increasing the fairness of law. Much
empirical work observes inconsistencies in judicial behavior. By
predicting judicial decisions—with more or less accuracy depending
on judicial attributes or case characteristics—machine
learning offers an approach to detecting when judges most likely to
allow extra legal biases to influence their decision making.
In particular, low predictive accuracy may identify cases of
judicial “indifference,” where case characteristics (interacting
with judicial attributes) do no strongly dispose a judge in favor of
one or another outcome. In such cases, biases may hold greater sway,
implicating the fairness of the legal system.”
Perspective.
Gartner:
Enterprise use of AI grew 270% over the past 4 years
Companies are adopting artificial intelligence
(AI) like it’s going out of style, according to a new report by
Gartner.
The Stamford firm’s 2019 CIO Survey of more than 3,000 executives
in 89 countries found that AI implementation grew a whopping 270
percent in the past four years, and 37 percent in the past year
alone.
… “If you are a CIO and your organization
doesn’t use AI, chances are high that your competitors do and this
should be a concern.”
Tracing the evolution of an industry.
Are sitdown
scooters the next big urban craze? Austin is about to find out
… Already home to thousands of electric
scooters, many of them crowding downtown sidewalks, the Central Texas
city will be the first to experience a new generation of shareable
electric scooters from an Oxnard, California-based company called Ojo
Electric. Unlike well-known scooter companies such as Bird and Lime,
Ojo's models are bulkier and include a seat.
Referred to as a "light electric vehicle,"
the scooters can travel 50 miles on a single charge and have a top
speed of 20 mph, in compliance with city regulations, the company
said in a news release. The company says their vehicles are designed
for bike lanes and streets.
What can I learn?
400 free
Ivy League university courses you can take online in 2019
Quartz:
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colleges in the world. They include Brown, Harvard, Cornell,
Princeton, Dartmouth, Yale, and Columbia universities, and the
University of Pennsylvania. All eight schools place in the top
fifteen of the US News and World Report 2018 national university
rankings. These Ivy League schools are also highly selective and
extremely hard to get into. But the good news is that all these
universities now offer free online courses across multiple online
course platforms.
So far, they’ve created over 494 courses, of
which around 396 are still active. Here’s
a collection of all of them, split into courses in the following
subjects: Computer Science, Business, Humanities,
Social Sciences, Art & Design, Science, Health & Medicine,
Data Science, Education & Teaching, Mathematics, Science,
Engineering, Personal Development, and Programming…”
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